Glickman also pointed to Nader’s absence from the public sphere since the 2000 election.

“He hasn’t been a major force in the past few years like he was 30 years ago,” Glickman said. “I’m not sure what he’s trying to push and what his goals are. In the last couple of years he hasn’t been out there articulating anything. I haven’t seen him give a compelling reason why the two-party system isn’t working.”

But Schade said that Nader has criss-crossed the country delivering speeches about democracy, and since the 2000 election he has also founded two grassroots political organizations—Citizen Works and Democracy Rising.

“He works 20 hours a day,” Schade said. “Has he gotten media coverage? Is the public aware of that? That’s a different story.”

Schade said that the campaign has raised $88,000 since Nader made his announcement Sunday morning on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“We raised more money in the first 24 hours of this campaign than any day in all of the last campaign,” said Schade, adding that the announcement has caused a flurry of activity in the real and virtual worlds.

“Volunteers are flooding the website. I hear people running down the halls saying, ‘The web numbers are tripling!’” Schade could not provide any numbers for the 36-hour-old campaign.

Grace Ross, co-chair of the Massachusetts Green-Rainbow Party, said that Nader’s decision to run as an independent has created a “conflict” for Greens.

“There are clearly people in the Greens who support Nader. There are people who are committed to him as an individual,” Ross said. “But there are also people who want to build a long-term movement, an alternative to the two-party system.”

Schade said that the biggest obstacle Nader faces is getting on the ballot. Yesterday in Washington, D.C., Nader pledged to run a 50-state campaign.

“One of the flaws of our current electoral system is that ballot access laws are so different across the country,” he said.

In Colorado, for example, Nader will get on that ballot by paying $500, while in Texas, Nader will have 60 days to collect 65,000 signatures from people who do not vote in Texas’ March 9 Democratic and Republican primaries.

“Forty states are not even swing states,” Schade said. “It’s a collusion of the two parties.”

—Staff writer May Habib can be reached at habib@fas.harvard.edu.